It’s time for some proper Ghost Stories…

To celebrate Halloween in style The Moment sat down for a creepy fireside chat with horror maestro, actor, writer and magician Andy Nyman – the co-creator of smash-hit play Ghost Stories, coming to Milton Keynes Theatre as part of a national tour next February. Read on, if you dare...

You’ve actually got your acting hat on at the moment, appearing in the hugely successful production of Hello, Dolly with Imelda Staunton at the London Palladium. Does it feel like maybe just a tiny bit of a break from all things terrifying?
Hello, Dolly is pure joy! But the interesting thing about horror plays, is that they’re quite rare – many plays pretend to be horror but they don’t really deliver the scares. However, something like The Woman in Black, which tells an amazing ghost story, doesn’t allow you time to think as an audience – the reactions just happen; you scream, you gasp, it’s like a roller coaster! And in a weird way, that is the same as Hello, Dolly – but what’s delivering that pure emotion is comedy and joy; the effect is the same, but it’s the laughter and cheering that hits you, you’re properly taken out of yourself, going on this journey and the emotions that go with it. It’s like an adrenaline shot.

Tell me about your evolution as a lover of horror – I think we’re roughly the same age and there was so much inspirational horror everywhere when we were growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, so I’m guessing it was from pretty early on?
Yes, Jeremy [Dyson, Andy’s co-writer on Ghost Stories] and I met at a Jewish summer camp in 1981 when we were both 15, and happened to share a dorm with about six other people. There were three kids from Leicester, of which I was one, and three kids from Leeds, including Jeremy. We very quickly realised that we both loved Starburst [a cult ‘fantastic film and TV’ magazine] and read the Alan Jones reviews, and we were both obsessed with movies like The Fog. It was during the time of the video nasty boom on VHS, so when I visited Jeremy in Leeds for the first time we went to the video shop and rented movies like The Exterminator and The Beyond – and it’s been a part of our lives ever since then! For years we had talked about doing something together, but our careers and lives took us in different directions for a lot of the time.

What was the trigger that finally brought you together to create Ghost Stories?
I had a flash of inspiration because I had also seen The Vagina Monologues. I didn’t really love it, but I did think: there are three women on stage reading, no set, and it’s a production that’s happening all over the world – that’s a pretty good business model. Then, those two worlds collided as I had the idea for a play – The Vagina Monologues with ghost stories! That was the seed of the idea: three men sitting telling ghost stories that pack the punch of a horror film, with big jumps. Ghost Stories of course evolved to be much more than that, but yes, that was where it started. I happened to mention it to a director whom I was working with at the time, and fortunately he went on to become the artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith. On his first day, he called me and asked about ‘the ghost story play’, so Jeremy and I discussed it and went in to talk to him. We had a chat the night before about what we thought it should be, and that was: utterly contemporary, and very British. We wanted it to feel like the Amicus and Hammer House of Horror films we grew up with, and the stories of MR James. We also knew we wanted it to be an hour and a half long with no interval, and with scares as good as any horror film. We told my friend all of this – and he said, “Great, commission done!” If only it were always that easy! It was such a lucky turn of events – a fluke, the gods aligning in exactly the right way.

And then were you on the clock? You had to turn out a brand new play, whilst juggling other commitments
Yes, we had a very narrow window to write it because I was filming something and Jeremy was writing something – we had a week where they told us to figure out what it was actually going to be about, but then it just kind of… vomited out of us! I mean, it was 35 years of horror fandom and influence, which had all just been waiting to burst out like John Hurt in Alien! Yeah, it had been gestating all that time. But this tour is going to be celebrating the play’s 15-year anniversary, and Jeremy and I find it still works on so many levels – there is a lot beneath the surface: what’s this really about? That’s how we work – we like to dig and dig and dig, so we find new little moments and new things, and discover new truths to share. We love that!

Without revealing any spoilers, we can say that the central character in Ghost Stories is
a hard-boiled sceptic when it comes to all things paranormal. Has your work with Derren Brown – who famously aims to ‘debunk’ the supernatural and explore the rational behind the irrational – fed into that? [Andy is Derren’s behind-the-scenes magic consultant and the co- creator of his live and TV shows]
One of the things that we think makes Ghost Stories so interesting is that there’s so much truth in it – it really makes it very hard to disentangle where the truth starts and where the lies start, so when you see the play, yes, it is very Derren-esque in that respect! And yes, psychologically, lots of it is true. There’s also a huge influence on Jeremy and me from Professor Richard Wiseman [professor in the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire] – he’s been a great friend of mine for years, and we’ve done stuff like recreating 18th-century séances, that kind of thing. So there’s loads of truth in the play, and there’s one very scary moment quite early on that is… well, you just need to Google it, because it’s real! It’s out there!

The huge success of the play led to a film adaptation in 2017, which must have given rise to a fresh set of challenges – how to keep the original premise and flavour that fans love, whilst offering something new and fitting it to a different medium
It was a long process, about 18 months. When you see the play, it’s framed like you’re attending a lecture – which works with a live audience, but in the film you just can’t have that. Without spoiling things, the whole ‘Charles Cameron’ character strand that drives the film is not in the play. We were trying to figure out how to approach it, and Jeremy is a big Stanley Kubrick fan; I had this thought – imagine receiving a letter from Stanley Kubrick, who everyone thinks is dead, but here he is expressing interest in collaborating on a film script with you. He even includes a photo with today’s newspaper to prove he’s alive. What would you do? That’s partly where this idea of ‘belief’ comes in, too. Anyway, that was the launch pad for this character, Charles Cameron, our main protagonist’s hero and mentor, who gets in touch with him out of the blue – and that’s the ignition for what happens in the film. But yes, it was a very difficult job, and we’re currently going through a similar process with adapting our novel The Warlock Effect for TV.

The Warlock Effect is the new series of novels that you and Jeremy are working on, set
in 1950s London about the adventures of virtuoso stage magician (and escapee from Nazi Germany) Louis Warlock. When I read the first one a few months ago I thought it would make a great adaptation! So, after many years of Ghost Stories, how are things now going with The Warlock Effect?
We were very blessed with the book – it became a Sunday Times thriller of the month, and we received bids from nine production companies interested in adapting it for TV. Ultimately, we chose a brilliant company that we both love, and we are currently in talks with a major network about the TV adaptation. Right now, we are in the writing process. Fingers crossed, it will make its way to screens possibly next year!

The book’s subject matter – the world of magician Louis Warlock – leads us neatly to that other hugely significant aspect of your life: that is, stage magic and your long-term partnership with Derren Brown
I’ve been doing magic for 40 years, and one of the things I used to be well-known for in the magic world was mentalism, that is, mind reading. This was at a time when no one else was doing it much any more – I’m talking about 25, 30 years ago when it wasn’t a popular form of magic. So, within that relatively small pond I did become quite a big fish, and gained recognition. Out of the blue, I was offered a one-hour special on Channel Four called Mind Control – they called me up and said they wanted to do this project with me, and I said it was very kind of them but I wasn’t interested, I’m an actor and that’s what I love. Long story short, I told them that if they found someone else I would be happy to write and direct for them, but I didn’t want to be the front man. About six months later, they came back to me and said they found this guy named Derren Brown. I had seen him at a magic convention before and he was absolutely extraordinary, with cutting-edge ideas. They introduced us and we hit it off immediately – we made each other laugh a lot and constantly managed to fool each other. We formed this fantastic working relationship where we truly complemented each other. He has a great, cutting-edge way of thinking, while I have a more old-fashioned, vaudeville way of thinking. The two worlds aligned perfectly. Together, we basically reinvented what mentalism was, and we worked together for a remarkable 24 years!

Finally, what would you say to anyone who might be wavering about going to see Ghost Stories on tour?
Oh my goodness, there are so many moments to look forward to! There’s one point in particular where you often hear in the audience… I mean, maybe you’re not going to be able
to print this, but this particular sequence finishes and you very often hear shouts of “No f**king way!” But the other really important thing I would say is: even if you don’t like horror, you will still love this play, and we hear that a lot about Ghost Stories – “I hate horror, but I loved this!” And that’s because, basically, you love having a good time!

Ghost Stories will be at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes, from Tuesday, 18 to Saturday, 22 February 2025.

Visit www.miltonkeynes-theatre.co.uk to find out more and to book tickets.